HOW DE BERQUIN INVITED DEATH
"Mademoiselle!" I whispered, starting up and taking her hand.
She trembled slightly, and averted her look. But she did not draw
away her hand.
"You are still disturbed by Marianne's news," I said. "But you have
little more reason to fear when M. de la Chatre is at Clochonne than if
he were at the other end of the province."
"Yet I do fear, monsieur," she said, in a low tone, "for your sake."
"Then if you will fear," said I, "I take great happiness in knowing that
it is for me. But this is no place or time for fear. Look and listen. The
moonlight, the sounds of the forest, the song of the nightingale, all
speak of peace."
"The song of the nightingale may give place to the clash of swords and
the cries of combat," she replied. "And because you have delayed here
with me, you now risk the peril you are in."
"Peril is familiar company to me, mademoiselle," I said, gaily. "It
comes and it goes. It is a very welcome guest when it brings with it the
sweetest lady in the world."
Talking thus, I led her around the side of the château to the old garden
appertaining to it, a place now wild with all kinds of forest growth, its
former use indicated by a broken statue, a crumbling grotto, and in its
centre an old sun-dial overgrown with creepers. The path to the sun-dial
was again passable, thanks to my frequent visits to the spot since my
first arrival at Maury. It was up this path that we now went.
The moonlight and the presence of mademoiselle made the place a very
paradise to me. We two were alone in the garden. The moon spread beauty
over the broken walls of the château on one side, and the green
vegetation around us leaving some places in mysterious shade. The
sun-dial was all in light, and so was mademoiselle standing beside it. I
breathed sweet wild odors from the garden. From some part of the château
came the soft twang of the strings responding to the fingers of the
gypsy, I held the soft hand of mademoiselle. I raised it to my lips.
"I love you, I love you!" I whispered.
She made no answer, only looked at me with a kind of mingled grief and
joy, bliss embittered by despair.
"It cannot be," I went on, "that Heaven would permit so great a love to
find no response. Will you not answer me, mademoiselle?"
"What answer would you have?" she asked, in a perturbed voice.
"I would have love for love."
Her answer was arrested by the sound of the gypsy's voice, which at that
instant rose in an old song, that one in which a woman's love is likened
to a light or a fire. These are the first words:
"Bright as the sun, more quick to fade;
Fickle as marsh-lights prove;
Where brightest, casting deepest shade--
False flame of woman's love."
"Heed the song, monsieur," said mademoiselle, in the tone of one who
warns vaguely of a danger which dare not be disclosed openly.
"It is an old, old song," I answered. "The raving of some misanthrope of
bygone time."
"It has truth in it," she said.
"Nay, he judged all women from some bitter experience of his own. His
song ought to have died with him, ought to be shut up in the grave
wherein he lies, with his sins and his sorrows."
"Though the man is dead, the truth he sang is not. Heed it, monsieur, as
a warning from the dead to the living, a warning to all brave men who
unwarily trust in women!"
"I needed no song to warn me, mademoiselle," I said, thinking of Mlle.
d'Arency and M. de Noyard. "I have in my own time seen something of the
treachery of which some women are capable."
"You have loved other women?" she said, quickly.
"Once I thought I loved one, until I learned what she was."
"What was she?" she asked, slowly, as if divining the answer, and
dreading to hear it.
"She was a tool of Catherine de Medici's," said I, speaking with all the
more contempt when I compared the guileful court beauty, Mlle. d'Arency,
with the pure, sweet woman before me; "one of those creatures whom
Catherine called her Flying Squadron, and she betrayed a very honest
gentleman to his death."
"Betrayed him!" she repeated.
"Yes, by a pretended love tryst."
Mademoiselle trembled, and held out her hand to the dial for support.
Something in her attitude, something in the pose of her slender figure,
something in her white face, her deep, wide-open eyes, so appealed to my
love, to my impulse to protect her, that I clasped her in my arms, and
drew her close to me. She made no attempt to repulse me, and into her
eyes came the look of surrender and yielding.
"Ah, mademoiselle, Julie," I murmured, for she had told me her name,
"you do not shrink from me, your hand clings to mine, the look in
your eyes tells what your lips have refused to utter. The truth is
out, you love me!"
She closed her eyes, and let me cover her face with kisses.
Presently, still holding her hand in mine, I stepped to the other side
of the sun-dial, so that we stood with it between us, our hands
clasped over it.
"There needs no oath between us now," said I, "yet here let us vow by the
moonlight and the sunlight that mark the time on this old dial. I pledge
you here, on the symbol of time, to fidelity forever!"
"False flame of woman's love!"
came the song of the gypsy, before mademoiselle could answer.
The look of unresisting acquiescence faded from her face. She started
backward, drew her hand quickly from mine, and with the words, "Oh,
monsieur, monsieur!" glided swiftly from the garden and around the
château. In perplexity, I followed. When I reached the courtyard she was
not there. She had gone in, and to her chamber.
But I was happy. I felt that now she was mine. Her face, her attitude,
had spoken, if not her lips. As for her breaking away, I thought that due
to a last recurrence of her old scruples concerning the barrier between
us. I did not attribute it to the effect of the sudden intrusion of the
gypsy's song. It was by mere accident, I told myself, that her scruples
had returned at the moment of that intrusion. What was there in her love
that I need fear? She had told me to heed the song as a warning. I
considered this a mere device on her part to check the current of my
wooing. Her old scruples or her maidenly impulses might cause her to use
for that purpose any device that might occur. But, how long she might
postpone the final confession of surrender, it must come at last, for the
surrender itself was already made. Her heart was mine. What mattered it
now though the governor had come to Clochonne solely in quest of me? What
though he knew my hiding-place, discovered by the persistent De Berquin,
and its location by him communicated through Barbemouche? For, I said to
myself, if De Berquin had sent word to the governor, Barbemouche must
have been the messenger, for the three rascals now held at Maury could
not have been relied on, and they had the appearance of having wandered
in the forest several days.
I was just about to summon Blaise, that I might learn the result of his
interrogations, when I heard the voice of Maugert, who was lying in watch
by the forest path, call out:
"Who goes there?"
"We are friends," came the answer, quickly.
This voice also I knew, as well as Maugert's. It was that of De Berquin.
I ran to the gate and heard him tell Maugert, who covered him with an
arquebus, match lighted, that he was seeking the abode of the Sieur de la
Tournoire, for whom he had important news.
"Let him come, Maugert!" I called from the gate.
I stepped back into the courtyard. At that moment Blaise came out of the
château. Very soon De Berquin strode in through the gateway, followed by
the burly Barbemouche. Both looked wayworn and fatigued.
"Monsieur de la Tournoire," said De Berquin, saluting me with fine grace
and a pleasant air,--he never lost the ways of a gallant gentleman,--"I
have come here to do you a service."
So! thought I, does he really intend to seek my confidence and try to
betray me, after all? Admirable self-assurance!
I was about to answer, when Barbemouche put in;
"So you, whom it was in my power to kill a hundred times over that night,
are the very Tournoire whom I chased from one end of France to the other
eight years ago?" And he looked me over with a frank curiosity.
"Yes," I said, with a smile, "after you had destroyed the home of my
fathers. And at last you have found me."
"I was but the servant of the Duke of Guise then," said Barbemouche.
At this point Blaise, who, in all our experiences with De Berquin and his
henchmen, had not while sober come within hearing of Barbemouche's voice,
or within close sight of him, stepped up and said, coolly:
"Let me see the face that goes with that voice."
And he threw up the front of Barbemouche's hat with one hand, at the same
time raising the front of his own with the other. The two men regarded
each other for a moment.
"Praise to the God of Israel, we meet again!" cried Blaise, in a loud
voice, catching the other by the throat.
"Who are you?" demanded Barbemouche.
"The man on whom you left this mark,"--and Blaise pointed to his own
forehead,--"in Paris on St. Bartholomew's night thirteen years ago."
"Then I did not kill you?" muttered Barbemouche, glaring fiercely
at Blaise.
"God had further use for me," said Blaise.
De Berquin and I both stepped aside, perceiving that here was a matter in
which neither of us was concerned. But we looked on with some interest,
deferring until its adjustment our own conversation.
"Then it was you who spoiled my appearance for the rest of my days!"
cried Barbemouche. "May you writhe in the flames of hell!"
And, being without sword or other weapon, he aimed a blow of the fist at
Blaise's head. Blaise, disdaining to use steel against an unarmed
antagonist, contented himself with dodging the blow and dragging
Barbemouche to a place where an opening in the courtyard wall overlooked
a steep, rocky descent which was for some distance without vegetation.
Here the two men grappled. There was some hard squeezing, some quick
bending either way, a final powerful forcing forward of the arms on the
part of Blaise, a last violent propulsion of the same arms, and
Barbemouche was thrown backward down the precipice. Blaise stood for a
time looking over. We heard a series of dull concussions, a sound of the
flight of detached small stones, and then nothing.
"God giveth the battle to the strong!" said Blaise, and he came away from
the precipice.
De Berquin shrugged his shoulders, and turned again to me.
"As I said, monsieur," he began, "I have come here to do you a service."
"Indeed!" said I, coldly, choosing to assume indifference and ignorance.
"I knew not that I was in need of any."
"Your need of it is all the greater for that," said De Berquin, quietly.
"Monsieur, I would hinder some one from doing you a foul deed, though to
do so I must rob that person of your esteem."
"Speak clearly, M. de Berquin," said I, thinking that he was taking the
wrong way to get my confidence. "It is impossible that any one having my
esteem should need hindrance from a foul deed."
De Berquin stood perfectly still and looked me straight in the
face, saying:
"Is it a foul deed to betray a man into the hands of his enemies?"
"Yes," said I, thoughtfully, wondering that he should try to begin that
very act by accusing some one else of intending it.
"Then, monsieur," he went on, "look to yourself."
But I looked at him instead, with some amazement at the assurance with
which he continued to face me.
"And what man of my following would you accuse of intending to betray
me?" I asked.
"No man, monsieur," he said, still meeting my gaze steadily, and not
changing his attitude.
"No man?" I repeated, for a moment puzzled. "Oh, ho! The boy, Pierre,
perhaps, who left us while we were at the inn by the forest road! Well,
monsieur, you speak falsely. I would stake my arm on his loyalty."
"It is not to tell you of any boy that I have sought you these many days
in this wilderness," said De Berquin, all the time standing as motionless
as a statue, and speaking in a very low voice. "It is not a boy that has
come from M. de la Chatre, the governor of the province, to betray you."
"Not man nor boy," I said, curious now to learn what he was aiming at.
"What, then? Mademoiselle's maid, honest Jeannotte? You must take the
trouble to invent something else, M. de Berquin. You become amusing."
"Not the maid, monsieur," he replied, very quietly, putting a stress on
the word "maid," and facing me as boldly as ever.
Slowly it dawned on me what he meant. Slowly a tremendous indignation
grew in me against the man who dared to stand before me and make that
accusation. Yet I controlled myself, and merely answered in a tone as low
as his, but slowly drawing my sword:
"By God, you mean _her_!"
"Mlle. de Varion," he answered, never quailing.
Filled with a great wrath, my powers of thought for the time paralyzed,
my mind capable of no perception, but that of mademoiselle's sweetness
and purity opposed to this horrible charge of black treason, I could
answer only:
"Then the devil is no more the king of liars, unless you are the devil!
Come, Monsieur de Berquin, I will show you what I think of the service
you would do me!"
With drawn sword in hand, I walked across the courtyard and pointed to
the way leading around the side of the château to an open space in one
part of the garden. I knew that there we should not be interrupted.
As I waited for De Berquin to precede me, I chanced to look at
Blaise. A strange, thoughtful expression was on his face. He, too,
stood quite still.
De Berquin looked at my face for a moment longer, then seemed to realize
the hopelessness of his attempt to make me credit his accusation,
shrugged his shoulders and said, courteously:
"As you will, monsieur!"
And he walked before me around the side of the château to the bare
space in the garden. Blaise, having received no orders, did not presume
to follow.
We took off our doublets and other encumbrances, De Berquin raising his
sheathed sword and very gracefully unsheathing by throwing the scabbard
off into the air, so that it fell some distance away in the garden.
Twice before that night it had been shown that I was the more skilful
swordsman, yet now he stood without the least sign of fear. If he had
formerly retreated, on being disarmed, it was from situations in which he
had figured ridiculously, and could not endure to remain before
Mademoiselle de Varion. Also, he had sought to preserve his life, so that
he might have revenge. But now that events had taken their turn, he
showed himself not afraid to face death.
"It is a pity," I said, "that a brave man should be so great a liar."
"Rather," he said, "that so brave a man"--and his look showed that he
alluded to me--"should be so easily fooled; and that so fair a woman
should be so vile a traitor."
And, seeing that I was ready, he put himself into a posture of defence.
The cup of my resentment having been already filled to overflowing, it
was impossible for me to be further angered by this. But there came on
me a desire to let him know that I was not as ill-informed as he had
thought me; that perhaps he was the greater fool. So, holding my sword
lowered, I said:
"You should know, monsieur, that I am aware who undertook the task of
betraying me to La Chatre."
"And yet you say that I lie," he replied.
"I know even how the matter was to be conducted," I went on. "The spy
was first to learn my place of refuge and send the information to La
Chatre. The governor was then to come to Clochonne. The governor is
already at Clochonne. The spy, doubtless, learned where I hid, and sent
word to La Chatre."
"Doubtless," he replied, impassively, "inasmuch as you speak of one of
mademoiselle's boys having left you. He was probably the messenger."
"Monsieur," I said, "you desire to leave a slander of mademoiselle that
may afflict me or her after your death; but your quickness to perceive
circumstances that seemingly fit your lie will not avail you. A thousand
facts might seem to bear out your falsehood, yet I would not heed them. I
would know them to be accidental. For every lie there are many
circumstances that may be turned to its support. So do not, in dying,
felicitate yourself on leaving behind you a lie that will live to injure
her or me. Your lie shall die with you."
"You tire me with reiterations, monsieur," he replied, calmly. "Since you
will maintain that I have lied, do so. It is you who will suffer for your
blindness, not I. I told you the truth, not really because I wished to do
you a kindness, but because there was a chance of its serving my own
purpose. The woman came here to find your hiding-place, and betray you to
the governor. La Chatre engaged her to do so. His secretary, Montignac,
took it into his head that he would like to become sole possessor of
mademoiselle's time and attractions. But he could not undo the governor's
plans, nor could he hope for the woman's cooperation, as she seems to
have taken a dislike to him. It had been agreed that, when she had turned
you over to the governor's soldiers, she should go to Fleurier to receive
her reward. She had made this condition so that she might keep out of the
way of Montignac. Now he dared not interfere to prevent her from doing
the governor's errand, but he hoped to see more of her after that should
be completed. Such, as it was necessary for him to tell me, was the state
of his mind when I came along--I, ordered from court, hounded from Paris
by creditors, ragged and ready for what might turn up. Near Fleurier
Montignac turned up, in La Chatre's cavalcade. He wanted me to become the
woman's escort to Clochonne, keep my eyes on her, know when she had
settled your business, and, when she was about to start for Fleurier,
keep her as his guest in a house that I was to hire in Clochonne. But why
do I grow chilly telling you all this, when you do not intend to believe
me? Shall we not begin, monsieur?"
"Doubtless you are vain of your skill at fabrication, monsieur," I said,
wishing to deprive him of the satisfaction of thinking me deceived by
his story, "but you have no reason to be. That a woman should be sent to
betray an outlaw, and then a man sent to keep her in view and finally
hold her,--it is complicated, to say the least. Why should you not have
been sent to take me?" I thought that I had touched him here.
"That is what I asked Montignac," he replied. "But he told me that she
had already been commissioned to hunt you down, before he had made up his
mind to possess her by force. Moreover, it would not do to disturb the
governor's plan, on which the governor was mightily set, though Montignac
himself had suggested it. 'And,' said Montignac, 'you have not a woman's
wit to find his hiding-place, or a woman's means of luring him from his
men.' And yet, you will remember that when I thought you were a lackey,
and you offered to deliver La Tournoire to me, I grasped at the chance,
for I knew that, however set the governor might be on having the lady
take you, he would be glad enough to have you taken by any one, and if I
took you and got the reward I could afford to bear Montignac's
displeasure. I think Montignac's desire to have the lady take you was due
to his having suggested the plan. He wanted both the credit of having
devised your capture and the pleasure of mademoiselle's society. Yes,
when you held out to me the possibility, I was willing to risk
Montignac's resentment and take La Tournoire myself. Before that, I had
confined myself to the task of following mademoiselle. At first you and
your supposed master were in my way. I had hoped to get her from you, and
to obtain her esteem by the mock rescue, but this was spoiled first by my
men and then by you. After that failure, I could merely follow and hope
that chance would enable me to do Montignac's will."
"You cleverly mix truth and fiction, monsieur," I said. "You interest
me. Go on."
It is true that he did interest me, so ingenious did I think his recital.
"I have no wish to prolong the life of one of us by this talk," he
replied, "but a tale once begun should be finished. You know how you
promised to deliver up La Tournoire to me. I grant that you kept the
promise to the letter. During the rest of that night I lay quiet with my
men. We heard your departure the next morning, and when the way was clear
we followed in your track. We could do so quietly, for we were afoot; we
had left our horses in another part of this wilderness the day before. We
heard you greeted by your sentinel, and guessed that you were near your
burrow. We came no further, but looked around and found a projecting
rock, under which to lie hidden, and a tree from whose top this place
could be seen. So we have lodged under the rock, one of us keeping watch
night and day from the tree. I hoped thus to be able to know when you
should be taken, so that I might then look to the lady. But no soldiers
came for you, neither you nor the lady departed from the place, no sign
came to indicate an attack or a flight. You can imagine, monsieur, how a
gentleman accustomed to court pleasures and Parisian fare enjoyed the
kind of life that we have been leading for these several days. Now and
then one of us would crawl forth to a stream for water, or forage for
nuts and berries, and we snared a few birds, which we had to eat raw, not
daring to make a fire. This existence became tiresome. This afternoon
three of my knaves deserted. What was I to do? It was useless to go back
to Montignac without having done his work. To stay there awaiting your
capture or the lady's departure was perhaps to starve. To go any distance
from this place was to lose sight of the woman, who might leave at any
time, and we could not know what direction she might take. The enterprise
had been at best a scurvy one, fit only for a man at the end of his
resources. In fine, monsieur, when the last of my men threatened to
follow his comrades, I crawled out of my hole, stretched my aching bones,
and resolved to let Montignac's business go to the devil. There was no
chance for me in the service of the French King, therefore I came to
offer myself as a member of your company. In the Huguenot cause I might
earn back some of the good things of life. It no longer matters on which
side I fight. 'Twas the same with Barbemouche. And, inasmuch as I had
decided to cast in my fortunes with yours, I naturally wished you well.
Thus it was my own interest I sought to serve, as well as yours, when I
told you that this woman came here to betray you to La Chatre."
"You told me that," said I, calmly, "for one or both of two
purposes,--the first, to make me withdraw my protection from the lady, in
order that she might be at your disposal; the second, to get my
confidence, in order that you yourself might betray me to La Chatre."
De Berquin laughed. "Am I, then, such a fool as to think that the wary
Tournoire could be put off his guard by a man? No, no. The governor or
Montignac was wise in choosing a woman for that delicate task. It is only
by a Delilah that a Samson can be caught!"
"Monsieur," I said, with ironical admiration, "you are indeed as artful
in your lies as you are bold. You have constructed a story that every
circumstance seems to bear out. Yet one circumstance you have forgotten,
or you are not aware of it. It destroys your whole edifice. The father of
Mlle. de Varion is now a prisoner, held by the governor's order, on a
charge of treason for having harbored Huguenots. Would his daughter
undertake to do the work of a spy and a traitor for that governor against
a Huguenot? Now for your ingenuity, monsieur!"
"Such things have been known," he answered, not at all discomfited. "His
daughter may not have her father's weakness for Huguenots, and if she
bears resentment against the governor on her father's account, her desire
of the reward may outweigh that resentment. Covetousness is strong in
women. You would not expect great filial devotion in a hired spy and
traitress. Moreover, for all I know, this woman may not be Mlle. de
Varion, although Montignac so named her to me. She may have assumed that
character at his suggestion, in order to get your confidence and
sympathy, not daring to pretend to be a Huguenot, lest some habitual act
might betray the deception."
"Enough, M. de Berquin," I said. "I do your wit the credit of admitting
that so well-wrought a lie was never before told. Only two things prevent
its being believed. It is to me that you tell it, and it is of Mlle. de
Varion! You complained a while ago of being chilly. Let us now warm
ourselves!"
And so we went at it. I had no reason now to repeat the trick by which I
had before disarmed him. Indeed, I wished him to keep sword in hand that
I might have no scruples about killing him. I never could bring myself to
give the death thrust to an unarmed man. Yet I was determined that the
brain whence had sprung so horrible a story against my beloved should
invent no more, that the lips which had uttered the accusation should not
speak again. Yet he gave me a hard fight. It was for his life that he now
wielded sword, and he was not now taken by surprise as he had been in our
former meetings, or unsteadied by a desire of making a great flourish
before a lady. He now brought to his use all his training as a fencer. He
had a strong wrist and a good eye, despite the dissolute life that he had
led. For some minutes our swords clashed, our boots beat the ground, and
our lungs panted as we fought in the moonlight. I was anxious to have the
thing over quickly, lest the noise we made might reach the ears of
mademoiselle, and perhaps bring her to the scene. I knew that Blaise
would keep the men away, but he would not presume to restrain
mademoiselle. I wished, too, to have the thrust made before my antagonist
should begin to show weakness of body or uncertainty of eye. But he
maintained a good guard, and also required me to give much time and
attention to my own defence. Indeed, his point once passed through my
shirt under my left shoulder, my left arm being then raised. But at last
I caught him between two ribs as he was coming forward, and it was
almost as though he had fallen on my sword. I missed his own sword only
by quickly turning sidewise so that his weapon ran along the front of my
breast without touching me.
He uttered one shriek, I drew my sword out of his body, and he fell in a
limp heap. With a convulsive motion he straightened out and was still. I
turned his body so that his face was towards the sky, and I went back to
the courtyard, leaving him alone in the moonlight.